A Cooperative School CultureSchool leaders are required to understand, address, and solve problems on the job. But in schools where there is cooperation among school leaders, teachers, and families, e
Chapter 13 Law, Ethics, and Educational Leadership: Making the Connection
Introduction
This chapter presents examples from the ISLLC standards of the relationship between law and ethics. The chapter also provides examples of how knowledge of law and the application of ethical principles to decision making helps guide school leaders through the sometimes treacherous waters of educational leadership.
Focus Questions
How may ethical considerations and legal knowledge guide school leader decision making?
Why is it important to consider a balance between these two sometimes competing concepts?
Case Study So Many Detentions, So Little Time
Jefferson Middle School (JMS) was the most racially and culturally diverse of the three middle schools in Riverboat School District, a relatively affluent bedroom community within commuter distance of Capital City. Unfortunately, the culture of Jefferson Middle School was not going well. Over the past 5 years, assistant superintendent Sharon Grey had seen JMS become a school divided by an underlying animosity along racial and socioeconomic lines. This animosity was characterized by numerous clashes between student groups, between teachers and students, between campus administrators and teachers, and between teachers and parents. Sharon finally concluded that JMS was a “mess.”
After much thought and a few sleepless nights, Sharon as part of her job description made the recommendation to the Riverboat school board to not reemploy Jeremy Smith as principal of JMS. Immediately after the board decision, Sharon organized a search committee of teachers, parents, and campus administrators and began the process of finding the right principal for JMS. The committee finally agreed on Charleston Jones. Charleston was a relatively inexperienced campus administrator but had impressed the committee with his instructional leadership knowledge, intelligence, and youthful energy. However, the job of stabilizing JMS was proving to be more of a challenge than anyone had anticipated.
Charleston had instituted a schoolwide discipline plan and had insisted that teachers and school administrators not deviate from the plan. However, he could sense that things were still not right. Animosity among student and parent groups remained just below the surface, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation. Clashes between teachers and students were still relatively frequent. Teachers still blamed one another, school administrators, and the school resource officer for a lack of order in the school. Change was not coming quickly to RMS, and Charleston understood that although school management had improved, several aspects of school culture were less than desirable. Student suspension rates remained high, and parental support was waning. As one of the assistant principals remarked after the umpteenth student referral, “So many detentions, so little time!”
Charleston felt the need to talk. He reached for the phone and made an appointment with assistant superintendent Sharon Grey. Charleston, surprised at Sharon’s willingness to meet with him on short notice, confessed his concerns. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” he said. “Sure, discipline is better, but the suspension rates are still too high, administrators are spending way too much time on what I view as trivial problems, and we haven’t made the progress on test scores that we should be making. It doesn’t take much to create a crisis where students are bickering, parents are calling, and board members are questioning the superintendent. Teachers are still not happy and send too many students for administrative punishment. When this happens, teachers think we don’t do enough, parents think we are too harsh with their children, and students complain that we never listen and always take the teacher’s side. It seems like someone is always challenging some decision or another. I am here at 6:00 a.m. and often don’t leave until later that night. I even spend some Saturday mornings here at school. The harder I work, the further behind I get. Well, you know the story.”
Sharon simply replied with a laugh, “You haven’t found the balance.”
Sharon’s simple response puzzled Charleston, and he hurriedly ended the conversation. Reflecting later that evening, Charleston muttered, “What in the world does she mean by ‘finding the balance’? I don’t get it. I guess I need to call back.”
Leadership Perspectives
The role of campus or school district leader is not an easy job. Charleston Jones, Sharon Grey, and the other school leaders presented in the case studies throughout this text face difficult challenges that would test the abilities of even the most experienced and capable. Sharon Grey’s answer to Charleston Jones, “Find the balance,” is deceptively simple. Paul Begley (2004) defines balance as finding “an appropriate equilibrium between competing forces.” Finding equilibrium, according to Begley, is particularly difficult in the environment in which today’s school leaders function. A significant part of the problem, according to Begley, is that school leaders are constantly bombarded with multiple agendas. Policies and politics at the national, state, and local level, parent concerns, an increasingly diverse student population, accountability demands, and community views are just a few examples. The fact that many of these agendas have competing interests complicates matters even more. For example, as illustrated in Chapter 3, federal court rulings regarding religious expression in school can conflict with student and community values. And, as Chapters 4, 7, and 11 illustrate, the First Amendment speech rights of teachers and students sometimes create considerable conflict within a campus and community.
The legal system at the federal, state, and local level often provides guidance and should influence decision making. In fact, the legal system is in many ways designed to guide school leaders in finding the appropriate balance between the interests of the individual and the interest of the state in providing an efficient and safe school for children. Knowing federal, state, and local laws, policies, and regulations is an important part of effective school leadership. However, as this text has illustrated, knowledge of law does not always provide an exact or fixed answer to many of the dilemmas faced by school leaders (Sperry, 1999). This text is full of examples of choices made by teachers, principals, superintendents, and school boards that resulted in legal challenges. Although the vast majority of court decisions related to public PK–12 education are made in favor of the district, some of these decisions seem questionable at best. Consequently, adding ethical considerations to legal principles can give a deeper understanding of the implications of decision making on the greater school community (Rebore, 2001). This idea of adding ethical principles to knowledge of law is conceptualized in ISLLC Standard 5D.
ISLLC Standard 5D
In Chapter 1, ethics was defined by three questions: (1) What does it mean to be a school leader? (2) How should the human beings in schools treat one another? (3) How should the educational institutions that we call school be organized? These questions, like Sharon Grey’s answer to Charleston Jones, may seem simple. However, it is how these questions are answered that to a large extent determines and perpetuates the choices school leaders make when confronted with questions of competing interests. In other words, ethical principles force a consideration of why some action should (or should not) be taken (Rebore, 2001).
Finding the appropriate equilibrium between competing interests is particularly important when applying legal and ethical principles to decision making. The following concepts demonstrate a few of the competing interests illustrated in this text.
What’s Legal and What’s Right (or Wrong)
ISLLC Standard 5 calls for an understanding of how to promote educational fairness and apply legal principles to provide a safe, effective, and efficient facility. School leaders are required to promote school safety and organize the systems of the school to create an efficient organization. However, they must do so in a fair way that respects the rights of others. This dual role of guardian of fairness and overseer of safety and efficiency may be the most difficult of the balancing acts school leaders must face.
ISLLC Standard 5
For example, school leaders are empowered by a variety of federal and state laws and school board policies to promote safety and efficiency. Courts are reluctant to overrule local administrative and school board decisions that promote safe schools (see Wood v. Strickland, 1975, for example). However, the understandable reluctance to substitute the views of federal and state judges for a local board of education’s interpretation of policies places school leaders in a role that is unique in our society. For all practical purposes, school leaders and boards of education are the “law.” There is little doubt that this unique situation facilitates the interests of the state in promoting efficiency and order in public schools. However, as a consequence, school leaders (especially campus leaders) must simultaneously serve the roles of chief investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner (Sperry, 1999). In other words, the very individuals most responsible for protecting the rights of students, teachers, parents, and others are also the ones with the greatest opportunity to violate these rights. There is no substitute for a firm knowledge and understanding of legal principles, state law, and local school board policy in decision making to promote school efficiency and safety. There is also no substitute for fairness in the application of this authority granted to school leaders.
Policy and People
Fundamental to fairness is an understanding and appreciation for the balance between policy and people. According to Jürgen Habermas (1987), all social systems are composed of two worlds: a systemsworld (policy) and a lifeworld (people). The systemsworld consists of the management designs that provide for an effective and efficient facility. For example, the school schedule, rules against fighting and bullying, curriculum articulation, and school board procedures for grievance resolution are just a few of the policies necessary for a safe, effective and efficient educational program. School boards and school leaders are empowered by a variety of national, state, and local policies and laws to support systemsworld efforts to promote good order and school safety. For example, school leaders may suspend or expel unruly students, institute drug testing policies for participants in cocurricular activities, search student lockers, suppress speech by teachers and students on campus that is counter to the educational mission of the school, and terminate the employment of inefficient or ineffective teachers.
The lifeworld is represented by the normative behaviors and practices that define school culture. A positive culture reflects the type of cooperative environment articulated in ISLLC Standard 4. This text presents several ways of measuring the relative degree of cooperativeness of school culture. Regardless of the measure, a positive school culture provides students, teachers, and others with a sense of community and personal importance.
ISLLC Standard 4
Both the lifeworld and the systemsworld are important. ISLLC Standard 3C is an example of this balance between people and the necessity for effective and efficient campus or district policies. However, the lifeworld and the systemsworld are in constant competition for dominance. A dominant lifeworld or systemsworld creates a dysfunctional culture that inhibits and stymies cooperative efforts to address the needs of all stakeholders. A dominant systemsworld creates a campus or district culture characterized by fractured relationships, anonymity, and loneliness. In a systems-dominated culture, policy is more important than people, creativity is marginalized, and most students and teachers do only the minimum required to stay out of trouble. Conversely, a lifeworld-dominated school culture is characterized by an undermining of control, an overattachment to the organization, and the ignoring of achievement goals and objectives (Habermas, 1987).
ISLLC Standard 3C
The point is this: Neither a systemsworld-dominant nor a lifeworld-dominant culture is conducive to the success of all stakeholders. The leadership challenge is to find a balance between policies and people to create a school culture that is not only effective and efficient, but designed to support positive interactions where fairness and a sense of acceptance, belonging, and importance are a normative part of school culture (Sergiovanni, 2000). This is a particularly difficult but necessary balance.
Order and Freedom
ISLLC Standard 3C calls for a “safe, efficient and effective learning environment”—in other words, order. ISLLC Standards 5C and 5E require school leaders to honor the rights of others by promoting equity, democracy, and social justice—in other words, freedom and equality. These values of order and equality are ingrained in American culture. They also often conflict, particularly in public schools. In fact, the conflict between freedom and order is at the base of many legal disputes between school districts and teachers, students, and parents. Student speech (especially student off- campus speech), the political speech of teachers, religious expression, and the rights of parents to control the education of their children are examples of the conflict between order and freedom common in schools across the nation. In an effort to balance the sometimes competing values of freedom and order, courts have consistently carved out a special niche for schools. The freedom-of-speech cases for students and teachers presented in this text exemplify this attempt to balance the freedom rights of students and teachers with the equally compelling needs of school leaders to maintain effective, efficient, and orderly schools.
ISLLC Standard 3C
ISLLC Standards 5C and 5E
The guidelines established in these cases, however, are often ambiguous. The challenge for school leadership is to find the proper balance in the individual and sometimes unique cases that arise. Some applications of these legal principles are relatively easy. For example, a teacher advocating illegal drug use or a student’s profane tirade in a school hallway or classroom would clearly create disorder and run counter to the educational mission of any school. However, what about teacher or student speech that raises issues of racial inequality or the rights of sexual minority students? These issues can certainly create controversy. But, at what point, if any, should the speech be suppressed because of the controversy? At what point does student or teacher speech become a “substantial disruption”? Just exactly whose rights should student speech be required to collide with, and at what point does a teacher’s right to speak on matters of public concern become disruptive of efficiency and order? In other words, when should the hecklers make policy? This is the challenge of finding the balance between order and freedom.
Privacy and Safety
School leaders have a legal responsibility and ethical obligation to keep schools safe. Public support for safe schools initiatives is strong. For example, a 2004 survey of adult parents of public school students in grades 5–12 found that 88% supported the establishment and enforcement of zero-tolerance suspension policies for serious violations (Public Agenda Foundation, 2004). At the same time, school leaders are expected to demonstrate a respect for the rights of students and teachers.
Balancing privacy and safety can be particularly difficult when making student or teacher search decisions. Again, the U.S. Supreme Court has created special rules governing searches of students and public employees. Recognizing the need for safety as a compelling state interest, these rulings substantially lower the bar for the legality of searches of persons and property on school grounds. However, American society and legal jurisprudence consider any search an invasion of privacy. The challenge is in finding the right proportionality among the need for a search, the rights of the individual, and safety. In other words, the balance between privacy and safety is not always as easy as it appears.
Equality and Inequality
Equality means fairness, impartiality, and evenhanded dealing (Garner, 2006). The concept of equality is addressed throughout the ISLLC standards. For example, all of the ISLLC standards include the phrase “An educational leader promotes the success of every student by. . .,” ISLLC Standard 5C refers to “educational equity,” and ISLLC Standard 5E uses the term “social justice.” Regardless of the terminology, educational equity or fairness means a school community where all participants have a fair opportunity to the best basket of goods and services available to all others (Rawls, 2001). Examples of educational equity include ensuring that all participants have equal opportunity to benefit from technology resources, advanced courses, cocurricular activities, the best teachers, student support services, and learning resources.
ISLLC Standard 5C
ISLLC Standard 5E
Sometimes, advocating for the success of all students or for that of students with special and exceptional needs requires inequalities. According to John Rawls (2001), inequalities can be justified as long as any inequalities are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged of the school community. For example, extra tutoring to allow a traditionally underrepresented subgroup of the school community to be successful in advanced courses is justifiable as long as an equal opportunity to enroll in the courses has been integrated into the school culture. This is an important point. The justification of inequalities is subservient to fair equality of opportunity. In other words, providing extra help for students who do not have a realistic chance of enrolling in advanced courses in the first place violates the basic principle of equality.
It is rare for teachers, parents, and school leaders to openly advocate excluding certain individuals from educational opportunities. Consequently, the conflict generated by equality and inequality comes in a variety of disguises. Sometimes better-educated and affluent parents have opportunities to influence policy that place their child (and similar children) in an advantageous situation compared to the exclusion of other children. In other situations, the demand for “fairness” creates pressure to treat all participants “the same” even when circumstances are different. Some zero-tolerance policies are an example of treating everyone the same regardless of circumstances in the name of fairness.
Finally, inequalities can be costly. Competition for time and money sometimes creates competing needs for limited resources. Advocating for more resources to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged can create considerable controversy. Finding the balance between the needs (or wants) of the many or most influential and the needs of the few or disenfranchised can be challenging. However, providing equality of opportunity for all participants and justifying inequalities is part of the definition of educational equity.
Facilitator and Decision Maker
The ISLLC standards call for school leaders to “nurture and sustain a culture of collaboration, trust, learning, and high expectations” and “Build and sustain positive relationships with families and caregivers.” In other words, school leaders are expected to be skillful communicators who respect the diverse views of students, parents, and teachers. These diverse views often present issues of conflicting interests. School leaders must develop the skills to acknowledge and respect competing interests, clarify common interests, and reach an acceptable decision. These efforts can be particularly challenging when participants feel that their integrity or their deeply held beliefs have been challenged. These efforts can also be challenging when collaborative efforts result in decisions that are not in the best interests of all students or that promote the opportunities of some students over others. In other words, it is possible that some members of the school community may act strategically to get their way rather than work for the greater good of all concerned. It is these situations that challenge even the most skillful campus and district leaders. The case studies presented in this text illustrate the difficulty of balancing the need for effective communication skills with the need for a conscious choice rather than acquiescence to demands. The importance given to effective communication and consensus building may well be one of the most significant changes in expectations for school leaders. These skills, however, represent one of the characteristics that separate school leaders from school managers.
ISLLC Standard 3A
ISLLC Standard 4C
Responding to Conflict
Conflict is inherent in the professional lives of school leaders. Conflict results whenever school leaders face a choice, especially when they are trying to find equilibrium between competing interests. Even decisions that are dictated by school policy or state law can generate conflict. However, the conditions of a school or district are not the result of outside forces. Rather, as a significant part of the school, the school leader must assume some responsibility for creating the conditions of the school. Ronald Rebore (2001) explains this concept in this manner:
The decisions (school leaders) make are free choices, even though they [may] flow from policies of the board of education. . . . They are free choices because the [school leader] is not extraneous to the leadership of a given building [or district]. [Any] decision carries a personal consequence for that [person]. He or she personally changes with every decision. [italics added] (p. 42)
Rebore is pointing out that school leaders are not extraneous to or independent of the position that they hold. The conditions school leaders find themselves in and the choices they face are not someone else’s fault. As part of the campus or district, school leaders have helped to create the conditions that are present. Thus, accepting responsibility for leadership decisions means more than simply following policy or past practice. Responsibility is accepting the freedom to choose between competing interests to promote educational equity, social justice, and meeting the needs of all stakeholders.
It is certainly appropriate, and healthy, not to internalize or agonize over all conflict generated by the daily interactions and demands of campus and district leadership. It is vitally important to respond in a healthy way to the conflict generated by school leadership. Seemingly interminable conflict makes it quite easy for school leaders to become disenchanted, cynical, and resentful. However, a firm knowledge of legal and ethical principles and healthy reflection provide a framework for meeting possibly the biggest challenge of educational leadership. This challenge is “to remain optimistic in the face of adversity” (Rebore, 2001, p. 272).
Summary
School leaders are expected to advocate for the success of all students, effectively communicate with stakeholders, and forge consensus when faced with issues of competing interests. This chapter illustrates how an understanding of law and ethics can serve as a guide in finding the sometimes difficult equilibrium necessary for meeting the needs of all stakeholders.
Connecting Standards to Practice
Review the opening case study “So Many Detentions, So Little Time.” This text has presented several ways to examine or audit campus culture for relative cooperativeness, fairness, and equality. As a class or group project, select one and describe how Charleston Jones could use the tool to examine the culture of Jefferson Middle School.
Assume the role of Sharon Grey in her meeting with Charleston Jones. What plan of action would you present to Charleston? What ISLLC standards are addressed in this case and in your plan?
Review the five examples of conflicting demands presented in this chapter. As a group or class project, give another example to illustrate each concept.
As a class or group project, identify values of competing interests other than those presented as samples in this text that school leaders face. Use the knowledge, skills, and dispositions gleaned from this text to present a two- or three-paragraph essay to the class.
Interview a principal or superintendent in your district. Ask her or him to briefly describe a recently encountered conflict. Prepare a brief summary (two or three paragraphs). Outline the conflicts inherent in the scenario.
